Louise Abbéma

Born into a wealthy aristocratic family, Abbéma grew up surrounded by Paris’s artistic elite and began painting in her early teens by undertaking classes with history painter, Louis Devedeux (1820-1874), and later with landscape painter Charles Joshua Chaplin (1825-1891) and portraitist Carolus-Duran (1837-1917).

After meeting Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) in 1871, with whom she would maintain a life-long artistic and romantic partnership, Abbéma regularly painted her lover’s portrait and, in 1874, began exhibiting her works at the prestigious Salon des Artistes Français where she received critical acclaim for her painting, Portrait de Mlle Sarah Bernhardt, sociétaire de la Comédie-Française in 1876.

From then until her death in 1927, Abbéma was a regular feature of modern art exhibitions, going on to receive an honourable mention for her panels at the 1881 Salon and a bronze medal and silver medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition, and her works were exhibited eight times at the Galerie Georges Petit as well as in the Women's Building at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

Never one to grow comfortable in her medium, Abbéma continuously experimented with different mediums and techniques, moving between oil painting, pastels, watercolours, sculpture and printmaking, as well as between subject matter, completing landscapes, large-scale panels, posters, advertisements, book illustrations and decorative fans.

Fuelled by her mantra ‘Je veux’ (I want), her success only grew at the turn of the twentieth century, and, in 1906, she was decorated as Chevalier of the Order of the Légion d'honneur. She also enjoyed the professional and personal benefits of being made an officer of the French order of academic merit, knight of the order of agricultural merit, officer of the order of merit of Saxe-Coburg, member of the painting section of the French horticultural society and of the committee of decorative artists.

Nevertheless, the recognition she enjoyed during her lifetime was not enough to sustain her influence, and no monographic exhibition of her work has ever been held since her death.